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One New Idea: A Visitor Survey

January 21 2013

post by Rachel Pastan

“Words can be visual art.”

Photo: Aaron Igler/Greenhouse Media

“The bike-powered art piece prompted me to consider that art can be participatory.”

Photo: Aaron Igler/Greenhouse Media

“I’m inspired to paint my stairs!”

I could fill this whole post with comments like these in response to the question, “What is one new idea you are taking away with you?” from a visitor survey ICA commissioned recently. Here are a few more:

“How can I apply the language of design?”

“Be more open minded.”

“Seek discomfort!”

“Museums = awesome.”

Of course, many of the questions in the survey were more straightforward: What did you come to see today? What is your age? Before today, were you aware that ICA is free?

Useful though responses to those questions are, we also wanted to understand what happens to people when they come to ICA. Maybe one day tiny functional MRI machines can be attached to visitors as they tour the museum to answer this question, but until then, asking about new ideas sparked by time in the galleries seemed like a place to start.

On a warm, cloudy Saturday last fall, I sat on a bench in ICA’s lobby and watched Claire Cossaboon, a masters student in museum communication at University of the Arts, administer the survey she developed for us. “So many people are excited about sharing their opinions,” she told me, which—somewhat to my surprise—turned out to be true. Maybe this is partly because of Claire herself. She’s enthusiastic without being chirpy, warm and attentive and good at listening. “So much of this is engaging in the conversation,” she explained, “so people don’t feel they’re taking a test.”

(primary)

I watch her chat with a couple in their fifties. “This show has been a flashback to my life,” the woman says. (She’s referring to Jeremy Deller: Joy in People, which reflects the artist’s interests in popular music and acts of rebellion among other things, and which includes a life-sized reproduction of a Manchester, England tea room, where you can get an actual cup of tea.) These people came in today because they just happened to be walking by. That’s their answer to question #3, “What prompted your visit?” Their suggestion of one thing they might change? “There should be free tea all the time!”

It’s gratifying to see how few changes our visitors request. Aside from some complaints about signage (“Have more panels with explanations about the meaning of the work”; “The way-finding was a bit confusing”; “I wasn’t sure if I could use the back ramp”) many of the suggestions are of the “It would be nice to incorporate music more into a future exhibition” variety. Or, “Bigger, I want more!”

I was surprised to learn how young our audience is—65% between the ages of 18 and 32—and thrilled to see how many say they would return again (98%) or recommend ICA to a friend (the same 98%).

Of course, the whole issue of surveying one’s audience raises questions. While it’s vital to know who our visitors are, how they learn about our shows, and if they’re confused about whether they’re allowed in the Ramp (they are), the bigger question of the relationship between audience and museum is complicated. What is our responsibility to please audiences? If we present a show that crowds the galleries, is that by definition more of a success than an exhibition that speaks deeply to just a few people and confounds or even annoys others? Is our first responsibility to the audience or to the art?

It’s easy to say (and I do say it) that there has to be a balance. We have more than one gallery after all, and more than one slot per exhibition season. In any given year we offer variety: the monographic and the thematic, the established and the emerging, works in different media by a diverse range of artists, work that’s more accessible and work that’s harder.

Still, there’s a part of me that wants to read the results of all these surveys, think about them, get better signage about the Ramp, and then forget the whole thing—sort of like a tennis player forgets the individual element of her stroke when she’s in the zone.

We believe—we believe passionately—in connecting the best new art to audiences. But the art itself is where we begin.

* * *

To stay up to date with all of ICA’s percentages, email miranda@icaphila.org.

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The Infinite Museum

January 27 2012

post by Rachel Pastan

I’m standing in a room in ICA I’ve never been in before—a room I didn’t know existed—looking at a wall of circuit breakers. “This is the breaker we need,” Kate says, “because it goes to the Jennifer Bolande phonograph.” She’s referring to the piece “Aerial Phonograph,” an actual record player on which an actual record turns, small parachuters on the label slowly spinning.

Aerial Phonograph

Photo: Aaron Igler / Greenhouse Media

Two of ICA’s current shows use a lot of technology, both old and new: video projectors and computers, phonographs and slide projectors. So getting the museum ready for visitors requires a lot more than unlocking the doors and switching on the lights. On ordinary mornings it’s not a problem, but sometimes we need to get the shows running unexpectedly, so Kate, Robert, Anthony, and I are learning to turn on the shows.

After the circuit breaker room, we visit another hidden place. Jennifer Burris, who curated the show with the slide projectors (Living Document / Naked Reality: Toward an Archival Cinema), leads us through the upstairs galleries and back into the shop, where she opens a hidey hole in the wall. There’s a computer in there, and a lot of cords, and some dust.

Hidey hole

Another computer runs the program that works the carousel slide projectors, four of which are lined up on a table as part of the piece “Sample Frames” by Alexandra Navratil. Landscapes from the twenties click by in a nostalgic wash of color, four related images at a time like notes making up a single chord. “It’s old school,” Jennifer says as we wait for the slow computer to start up. “To start the program, you just hit the down arrow.”

"Sample Frames"

Alexandra Navratil, Sample Frames, 2011, installation with 4 synchronized slide-projectors, 81 images on each projector (loop). Courtesy of the artist.

We take notes, ask questions. I look around for hobbits or gremlins, for other doors to other rooms. In February, ICA will host a program called “An exhibition to hear read,” activating many of the museum’s “interstitial spaces” (the lobby, the elevator, the coat closet, the bathrooms) through the perfomative reading of various texts. The performers won’t use these secret places where equipment lives, but for a moment I imagine how it would be to open a hatch and find a person in there, reciting.

There’s a dream common to people who live in Manhattan. One day they suddenly discover a room in their apartment they never noticed before. For me today, the ICA is becoming a dream museum, hatching new spaces as though it were infinite.

In a different way (temporally rather than spatially), maybe the ICA is infinite. A proud parade of shows stretches back to Clyfford Still in 1963 and forward into the unknown, like the ghostly procession of kings in Macbeth. Centuries from now—millennia from now—who’s to say someone won’t be standing right here, powering up tiny nuclear reactors, perhaps, to project light onto the very air.

* * *

To sign up for Miranda’s mailing list, email rpastan@ica.upenn.edu.

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Truffling Season at ICA

December 23 2011

post by Rachel Pastan

Cinderella

Oliver Herford illustrated the fairy godmother inspired from the Perrault version

Every fall I, along with hundreds of other staff members from museums and dance companies and botanical gardens from around the Philadelphia region, start hunting down facts and figures like so many pigs in truffle season. How many people came through our doors last year? Of these, how many were school children in groups? How many people made financial donations? How many interns do we have? What is the most popular sweater color among visitors? Okay, I made that last one up, but at this time of year I do feel like Cinderella when her step-mother tosses the lentils into the fireplaces and tells her to pick them all out if she wants to go to the ball. Of course, it’s all for a good cause.

I am not a data person, but I don’t deny the power of data. The bits and pieces I and my colleagues hunt down get funneled into an enormous and influential database, The Pennsylvania Cultural Data Project (PACDP), which collects information like this from all over the state. The accumulated data gets used, then, in a couple of ways. One of these ways is good for the organizations: we use our own portion of it when we apply for grants to reassure foundations that we are doing our job responsibility and deserve support.

But even more significantly, the whole kitchen full of information is used to promote arts and culture to the public and the government. Because of the truffles our little snouts root up, organizations like the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (GPCA) are able to go public with statements like this: Cultural organizations and their audiences in greater Philadelphia spend $1.3 billion annually, and the economic activity of the cultural sector generates 40,000 jobs and returns $158 million in taxes to state and local communities (GPCA report, “Arts, Culture, & Economic Prosperity in Greater Philadelphia“). This helps keep pressure on City Hall and Harrisburg to support the arts.

Here at ICA, we’re also planning a more personal truffle hunt. Recently a bunch of us met to discuss what kinds of things we’d like to find out about our audience. In the galleries and at our public programs, I’m always wondering who our visitors are. That tall older guy with the faded tattoos, the well-dressed woman with the high gold sandals, the young couple in matching leather jackets: who are they, and why are they here, and will they come back? If not, why not? And if so, what is about what we’re doing that they like? My colleague Ingrid Schaffner recently got back from Europe where she said the art museums were full: families, young people, old people, all strolling through as though going to an art museum were just one more thing you might choose to do, like going to the movies or the mall.

Photo: J. Katz

This fall we called around to some of our peer institutions who sent along examples of their own surveys. Some are quite short, others fairly long. Almost all of them ask for age, sex, income, race: these are the usual pieces into which the pie chart gets sliced. Many of them also ask: Where do you get your arts and culture news? How satisfied were you with your experience today? What’s your email address? If you’re lucky, the museum will give a nice postcard in exchange for your cooperation.

I can’t help feeling—or maybe just dreaming—that there should be other questions we could ask that would get at something more essential about our audiences. What’s one of your favorite shows you’ve ever seen at an art museum? What magazines do you read? What country do you hope to visit? What do you believe to be the purpose of art?

ICA at night

Photo: J. Katz

Or wait, here are better questions still: What do like to wear when visiting museums? If the ICA were a kind of weather, what kind of weather would we be? Now that you’ve seen the shows, will you contact us tomorrow and let us know what you dream tonight?

The answers to questions like these wouldn’t feed us. They wouldn’t help us get us grants or lobby the government. The yield from these inquiries would be more like magic mushrooms than like truffles: heightening our perceptions, giving color to the air.

* * *

Let us know what questions you think an ICA visitors survey should ask. We’d love your input.

To sign up for Miranda’s mailing list, email rpastan@ica.upenn.edu.

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In Between Times, part 2

August 19 2011

post by Rachel Pastan

Last week I wrote about ICA‘s summer shows closing; this week we’re more focused on opening the new, a shift that seemed to happen early Tuesday afternoon. On Tuesday morning, when I poked my head into the downstairs gallery, all I could see were sealed up crates and a push broom leaning up against the wall. When I stopped by later, though, Paul and Robert were in there untaping boxes. The first material for Blowing on a Hairy Shoulder / Grief Hunters had arrived.

Paul and Robert opening a crate.

“Look at this,” Robert said. He held up a baseball cap with a slogan reading, “I wish I could afford a Borsalino like my son in Kollel.” The hat, along with the other things in the boxes, is for a scatter piece by Eli Petel, a Tel Aviv artist who works in video and installation. I don’t know what a Borsalino is—a car? A stereo? A fancy golf club? And where is Kollel? The joke seems to be that the words are in English but we English speakers can’t parse them, we can only try to glork the meaning from context.

Other items emerge: Mendelssohn LPs, an expired passport, an old coin, a hand broom you might use to sweep a hearth. What can we guess about Eli Petel (or the persona he’s constructed) from this assortment? Is he nostalgic for the past, or does he maybe want to sweep it away?

More stuff.

Photo: J. Katz

And what is a Borsalino? I ask Jenna if she knows.

“Maybe people who hang out at the Bourse in Old City?” she suggests.

Out in the lobby, Paul and Jacob are wheeling carts with boxes holding the work Alex Da Corte made for a show that just closed in the Project Space. Alex was in yesterday to de-install it, after which (I’m told) everyone was covered with baby powder. Before I can find out why, Eliza comes down the stairs with news of some problem with the carpet that’s being installed in the auditorium. Robert goes off to investigate.

Yes, ICA’s auditorium is getting a makeover! Earlier this summer, Thom painted its walls a lovely gray. Next time you come for a program, we should have new, more comfortable chairs as well. I could write a whole blog post, actually, about the Quest for the Perfect Chair. Or possibly a novella.

Upstairs again, I ask William what he thinks about the Borsalino. “A plumbing thing,” he guesses. “Or something you wear around your neck. Or maybe a hat.” He’s in the conference room, where the programming people are getting ready for their weekly meeting. On the agenda: revamping our Guide by Cell. Call me biased, but ICA does a wicked job with this bit of auditory interpretation. Still, it’s on the table for an upgrade. They talk logistics: different platforms for recording the speakers, the best time to get people to sit down and tape a segment. Robert, finished with the carpet crisis, asks, “Do we think we should choose the show that’s hardest to understand to focus on for Guide by Cell?” Which fall show would that be, anyway? It’s not as easy a question to answer as you might think.

Hand with passport.

Snacks are always an important topic at programming meetings. At this one we discuss what to serve at the reception for graduate students we’re hosting in a couple of weeks, and where to serve it. Wine or beer? (Wine.) Auditorium or terrace? (Auditorium first for a quick slide presentation, then up onto the terrace for snacks.)

“I was thinking about a DiBruno’s mediterranean tray,” Jenna says.

“Is that the one with candied pecans?” William says.

“Tell the story about when you had that allergic reaction to nitrates,” Kate says.

“The next agenda item is front desk coverage,” Alex says.

I ask Alex if she knows what a Borsalino is.

“A kind a cheese?”

Back downstairs, the Eli Petel unpacking is going well.

More stuff.

Photo: William Hidalgo

Grace carefully records each item: every coin, every stick, every scrap of paper. My eye snags on that hat again, and I go back upstairs to Google it.

A hat! A Borasalino is a special, name-brand hat, like a Stetson. An Italian company, Borsalino is known for its fedoras made of felt made from Belgian rabbit fur. So, Petel’s hat is self-referential, like the T-shirt that tells everyone that all you got was this lousy T-shirt.

And Kollel? That one you’re going to have to look up for yourself. Or maybe come by ICA and ask William.

“I told you a Borsalino was a hat,” William says.

What can I say? William is always right.

*           *           *

NEXT WEEK: Look for a Miranda’s first-ever guest post by very special pinch hitter.

ICA’s three new shows, Charline von Heyl, Blowing on a Hairy Shoulder / Grief Hunters, and Bill Walton’s Studio, open on the evening of Wednesday, September 7.

To sign up for Miranda’s mailing list, email rpastan@upenn.edu.

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In Between Times (or, Not yet, not yet…)

August 12 2011

post by Rachel Pastan

The shows closed on Sunday, all three of them: Sheila Hicks, One is the loneliest number, and That’s How We Escaped. It was super busy at ICA the last few weeks as people flooded in to see them before they closed. We probably set a record for summer attendance. The current unofficial count is upward of 10,000 people, including 1,665 who came for programs and events.

Sign on door says ICA is closed

One of the main contributors to that solid program attendance number was last Wednesday’s Sister Ray Slam. Close to 400 people crowded into ICA to see Andy Warhol films (care of Jay Schwartz and Secret Cinema), eat Little Baby’s Ice Cream (Earl Grey Sriracha, Balsamic Banana, Birch Beer Vanilla Bean, and other flavors), and hear Dry Feet, Megajam Booze Band, and the Sweet Sister Ray band each offer up their own rendition of the Velvet Underground’s classic “Sister Ray.” Having planned to have the Slam outdoors on the terrace, we were upset when the forecast called for rain. But as it turned out, the energy inside that packed building was fabulous, a contemporary echo of a 60s Warhol Factory bash. The only downside was how utterly totally drenched people got taking the trash out to the dumpster at the one in the morning.

Even with the shows closed and the museum doors locked, there’s plenty to do. There are new shows to open, loose ends to tie up from old ones, and groundwork to lay for projects that won’t be in the galleries for years. I spent a lot of the day copy editing the proof of the catalogue for last winter’s Anne Tyng exhibition, which also documents the show’s run at the Graham Foundation in Chicago in the spring. ICA often publishes its catalogues after the shows open, because for us these books document the exhibitions as they are presented here in our space. Installation photography is crucial, so even if the photographers get in as soon as the show opens, there’s a delay. This catalogue is going to be gorgeous—well worth the wait—with vivid images of two very different installations of the same work in Philadelphia and Chicago. I love what the book designers, Project Projects, have done with Tyng’s life chronology, laying it out with photographs and relevant quotations from the architect like this aphoristic one: “It takes more than effort to make something simple.”

Also today, Becket was arranging travel for Ingrid to research a show scheduled for 2013, and Kate was ordering two versions of part of the wall vinyl because there might only be 19 artists in an upcoming show instead of 20, and Jacqueline was revising the bios of the 20 (or perhaps 19) artists in that show, and Alex was trying to nail down presenters for the fall programs, and Nikyia was adding installation crew members into the payroll system, and Annie was sealing stacks of invitations to the fall opening dinner into envelopes.

At noon, though, everyone took a break for the intern goodbye lunch.

Intern lunch

Photo: William Hidalgo

Luckily the weather was good, so this time we could be on the terrace. It’s impossible to overstate the amount of work the interns do for ICA, and it’s always sad to see them go, but they are en route to new adventures. One is going off to study in China, another to a programming job at an art center in her home town, and a third to finish her degree in painting. Pretty soon these people and others like them will be running museums all over the world.

It’s amazing how fast the shows come down. On Monday, the crew took all the crates out of storage and put them near the pieces that would be packed into them. On Tuesday, I finally got to see the inside of the crate from the Stedelijk Museum that Sheila Hicks compared to a boat during installation last March. Annie and I marveled over its J-shaped compartments, while Enrico Martignoni, here from Paris for the de-install, explained that the Stedelijk crates are always the same size—so that storing them doesn’t become a jigsaw puzzle—and therefore the inside parts must be custom designed for the art. By Wednesday, nearly everything had been packed up. The geometric green sculptural pieces by Lucas Ajemian and Julien Bismuth looked lonely in the upstairs gallery like the last autumn leaves still clinging to the tree.

Next week construction will begin for the new shows, which open September 7. ICA is presenting a major retrospective of the work of painter Charline von Heyl; a group show of mostly young, mostly Israeli artists, guest curated by Tel Aviv-based Doron Rabina; and a re-creation of the studio of the minimalist sculptor Bill Walton, who was important to so many artists in Philadelphia. I’m excited about all of these shows, but it’s difficult how quickly they surge toward us. Not yet, not yet, I want to say. Give us a little silence first—or perhaps a tolling of bells—to mark the passage.

*           *           *

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Marilyn

June 23 2011

post by Rachel Pastan

“Look at those buttons!” Marilyn says, reaching for my sweater. Or, “Look at the way that seam is stitched.” She likes fabric, my boss. She talks about sample sales, quilts in progress, color and texture and sheen. She won’t be my boss much longer, though. After over eleven years as ICA’s Director of Development and Alumni Relations, Marilyn is leaving in a few days.

Marilyn Pollick grew up in Philadelphia in a neighborhood of German and Jewish immigrants who shared one another’s holidays. She put herself through Wharton, worked for the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Franklin Institute, and served on the boards of many Philadelphia institutions. For a while she lived in Alaska, where if you’re not careful, she says, the ice fog can cut your throat. As a consultant, she has traveled the country. At ICA, where she has worked since 2000, she has been an enthusiastic and tireless advocate for the museum, for the arts, and for Penn. Also, she’s a skillful fisherman.

At ICA, Marilyn has overseen a fundraising campaign that has nearly reached its $17 million goal. The museum now has endowments to support our director’s position, exhibition publications, and the guest curator program that gave us, most recently, the wonderful exhibition Set Pieces, curated by artist Virgil Marti from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In addition to the big things, she is always quick to attend to the little things: writing name tags, considering menus, arranging flowers. In a crowded car stuck in traffic on the way home from an event, she will be the one making jokes to keep spirits up. She always finds the time to talk to an alumni stopping by the museum, or a young person considering applying to Penn. She listens to their stories. As my colleague Christy says, “That is the true gift of a development officer.”

Marilyn isn’t one for talking about her past, but if you listen to the hints and allusions, the occasional bright detail (the grandmother’s cameo, the stapler thrown through the air, the warrior yoga), you start to understand how many lives she has lived, and how deeply Philadelphia—and Penn—are part of her.

There is something birdlike about Marilyn’s features, her fine feathery hair, and the way she tilts her head. When I heard she was leaving ICA, it seemed to make sense: it was time for her to shake out those folded wings.

On one of the most beautiful days of June, the ICA staff had a picnic on the Terrace to say goodbye. We ate fried chicken and potato salad, and Marilyn cut large slices of cake. Some reminiscing was done: What was your favorite Benefit? What was your least favorite Benefit? Do you remember when the tent broke and we were standing in three inches of water?

Most of what happened over the past decade I know only through stories and guesses. Most of Marilyn’s career at ICA took place before my time there. The working folders of Staff Writers past are nested inside each other like Russian dolls on ICA’s shared computer drive: Susan inside Joseph inside Brett inside Elysa inside me. All of us have benefited from Marilyn’s warmth, her kindness, her acute editing pen, her extraordinary knowledge of the Philadelphia community, and her passion for the arts and philanthropy.

Marilyn, the offices of ICA will be duller without your bright plumage.

* * *

To sign up for Miranda’s mailing list, email rpastan@upenn.edu.

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New Blood, or, What’s the name of that copier?

June 17 2011

post by Rachel Pastan

Kate says, “Robert Mapplethorpe did a show here in the eighties that was really important and raised a lot of censorship issues.” She’s talking to this year’s crop of ICA summer interns and work study students, who of course mostly don’t know about the 1988 Mapplethorpe show, or any of our other historic shows: Andy Warhol, Agnes Martin, Glenn Ligon, Richard Artschwager, etc. This is the official orientation session, but a history lesson isn’t part of the program. It’s just that someone asked why our big printer/copier/scanner is named Mapplethorpe. Now they know.

Darcey, ICA’s Associate Registrar, has put together a manual called A-Z of ICA (really it’s A-T, “answering the door” to “timesheets”) which is full of information like: “When we are not open, it is your job to answer the door intercom when it rings. It is usually a fellow intern/work-study/volunteer/key-forgetting employee who needs to be let in. Other times, it is a VIP who has an appointment.” And, “Copying is a useful life-long skill. If you are not already proficient in copying, approach this internship as a chance to be!” The manual is a model of clarity and comprehensiveness, and as Kate takes us through it, I learn a thing or two I didn’t know.

The new interns are an appealing bunch, and they all seem ready to jump in. Anna-Lara is a history major at Penn who has previously worked at the Penn Museum. Julia took one of the courses ICA co-presents every other year, “Writing Through Literature and Art,” and she has studied Chinese for seven years. Pam knows everything about social media. Elizabeth has set fabric sculptures afloat on the pond at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s Art Camp for children. Annie studies painting at Washington University and plays the oboe. (Sometimes we have men, too, just not right now.)

Also at this orientation is Alex Klein, ICA’s new program curator, who started work this week too. Alex is an artist, writer, and co-founder of the independent publishing imprint Oslo Editions. While working at LACMA in 2007, she made amazing conversations about photography happen in all kinds of places and over all sorts of channels: essays, discussion forums, debates, questionnaires. Eventually the project turned into a website and then a book. Alex is also a dog owner, a Philadelphia native, a vegetarian, a recent lecturer at the Roski School of Fine Arts at USC, and already a calm, informed, discerning presence around the office. She has wonderful ideas for expanding the range of programs we do here, and for activating new parts of the museum as well as the traditional programming spaces.

Kate shows us the library-cum-conference-room with its shelves of catalogues (browsing encouraged during slow times), the new mirror on the back of the director’s office door (“Before events there’s kind of a mad scramble to get mirror time”), and the supply closet. She talks about catalogues, label printing, computer passwords, the mini-kitchen.

ICA has a terrific public face, whether we’re talking about exhibitions like Kate’s current show, One is the loneliest number, or programs like the Ayurveda Workshop that the collaborative Megawords is presenting here next Wednesday. However, it is the efforts of bright, energetic, ambitious student workers—the prompt and polite answering of the door buzzer and the mastery of the powerful Mapplethorpe copier—that makes it all possible.

To sign up for Miranda’s mailing list, email rpastan@upenn.edu.

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Spring at the ICA: A haiku and cake celebration

May 27 2011

post by Rachel Pastan

Cake by Anna Cohen. Photo: J. Katz

The Tree of Knowledge
has many flowering branches.
Thank Eve. Thank the snake.

-L.S.

This lovely haiku was posted as a comment to the recent Miranda that celebrated ICA’s blog’s first birthday. Thanks to everyone who sent their birthday wishes in the various forms of poems, pastries, and pictures!

Please enjoy them, and add more in the comments section if you’re so inspired.

Nerd's Rope from Kate Kraczon. Photo: J. Katz

Mira Miranda!
She sneaks up on little tweets,
and swallows them whole.

-I.S.

Marie Antoinette
She said let them eat snake cake
And off went her head

-J.W.

In the effort to
connect with our audience
in just a year’s time.

-W.H.

A new skin, but still.
Black and white, red all over
Miranda the snake.

-R.C.

And this from our wonderful designer, Thom Anthony, after I’d asked him for the tenth change in one morning for the new Miranda design:

let’s all endlessly
revise minutae until
my fingers fall off

That man needs a slice of virtual snake cake!

As do we all. Snake cake for everyone!

Cake by Jenna Weiss. Photo: J. Katz

* * *
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Miranda’s Birthday

May 12 2011

post by Rachel Pastan

When I started working at ICA in 2009, everyone agreed the museum needed a blog but no one wanted to write it. Poke around the web and you’ll find that almost every museum, large or small, has a blog these days, but for the most part reading them makes you think that the people who write them aren’t having much fun. You can find information in those pixels, but not a lot of inspiration or delight. As a former columnist, and also a novelist, I thought it would be nice to write a kind of online ICA column, made up of little essays and stories that not only described the cool stuff going on at ICA but also seriously explored the work of museums: what curators do, how art is moved around, even how money is raised. I also wanted it to be fun to read.

Luckily for me, ICA liked the idea. In a fit of inspiration, our director Claudia Gould named the blog after my recently deceased corn snake, Miranda. It seemed like a fine choice. The name is derived from the Latin word “mirare”—to admire—and can mean something worth looking at or deserving of admiration. It’s also a nice way to remember my snake.

The real Miranda, in a friend's pocket.

This month, we are celebrating Miranda’s first birthday!

Please send her your birthday wishes. You can use the comments field below for congratulations, compliments, and also suggestions for the coming year. You can post haiku, prose poems, anagrams, koans. Even better, send birthday flowers—or birthday mice!—by attaching images to an email care of me. If we get enough, we’ll post these in a special Miranda at the end of the month, with a free ICA catalog for the sender of the most inventive gift.

As an even better birthday tribute, email me to sign up for our Miranda mailing list, so we can let you know when there’s a new post.

Foil snake by Adam Blumberg. Photo: Robert Chaney

A year ago we published the first blog posts, about me trying to count the people coming in the door for the Queer Voice opening, why public programs are important, and what Chuck Close said in his roast of Lisa Yuskavage at our annual benefit. May is also the month of my own birth. There has been some confusion between me and Miranda, and for the most part that’s okay, as we do largely share one another’s opinions. Miranda is perhaps a little jauntier than I am, and occasionally more sentimental. Looking back over the year’s work, I see that I no longer manage to post twice a week (though only twice have I ever missed a week’s posting). On the other hand, my use of photographs is much improved. These days I try to make them part of the narrative, not just incidental decoration.

Cobra on Wood, by Nick Payne

I’ve been looking back over some of my favorite posts. I still really like the first one, which talks about my aspirations and gives a sense of daily ICA life:

http://www.icaphila.org/miranda/video-art-replay/miranda-opening-3/

I’m fond of this one, that connects architect Anne Tyng to Odysseus’s Penelope:

http://www.icaphila.org/miranda/anne-tyng/anne-tyng-platonic-solids-and-penelopes-bed/

and this one about the mystery of art crates:

http://www.icaphila.org/miranda/mineral-spirits-anne-chu-and-matthew-monahan/big-truck-unloading/.

People really enjoyed these two, about departing staff members, Head Preparator Shannon Bowser and Curator Jenelle Porter:

http://www.icaphila.org/miranda/miscellaneous/talk-to-the-boss/

http://www.icaphila.org/miranda/curating-and-curators/778/

This one, about the de-installation of Virgil Marti’s exhibition, Set Pieces, is the silliest and most poetic:

http://www.icaphila.org/miranda/set-pieces/elegy-for-an-exhibition/.

I hope you have enjoyed Miranda so far, and that you’ll continue to follow her.

Virtual coils
slithering through the white cube:
throw the doors open!

by Casey Watson

* * *

Snake images above (except the real Miranda) by members of ICA’s fabulous installation crew.

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Ambassador of Art

January 21 2011

Javi & other members of ICA's Student Board. Photo: J. Katz


post by Rachel Pastan

Last Wednesday afternoon, as on many afternoons over the last two years, Penn student Javi Battle was in ICA’s conference room for a meeting of the Student Advisory Board. It would be his last. Javi is graduating this winter and moving to New York to start an executive training program at Lord and Taylor. He’s crossing that potent, invisible threshold from school into the world.

ICA has a complex relationship with Penn. We are part of it, we sit in the midst of it, its students work in our offices and tour our galleries and surge past us down the sidewalk on their way to Urban Outfitters across the street. Each year we collaborate with the School of Arts and Sciences to co-teach a class for undergraduates, and some of our programs, like last fall’s Free For All, are specifically geared toward Penn students. At the same time, the museum raises most of its own money and has independent relationships with the art world. Still, education is at the heart of much of what we do, and having students advise us, offering us their perspective and their energy, helps. In return we trust that being part of ICA will be a memorable and influential part of our student board members’ education. Listening to Javi’s enthusiasm makes me optimistic that it is.

Javi is passionate about art and about ICA. Growing up in Arizona, he played a lot of soccer, but his mother took him to art museums too. Coming to Penn to study at The Wharton School of Business, he quickly found his way to the museum, coming to shows and attending programs. One day ICA Director Claudia Gould came up to him after he’d asked an interesting question at a lecture. She’d seen him around the museum a lot and wondered if he wanted to join the student board. He did.

One important role the board plays is liaison to fellow students, letting them know what’s going on at the museum and motivating them to come by. Last year, at their request, student board members were trained as docents and gave tours. “The first one was tough,” Javi says. “But after two or three I got the hang of it.”

I asked him what he likes about ICA. There were a lot of things on the list:

“I love that I can go there and be by myself and look at art. I love seeing things I’ve never seen before. ICA has really opened my eyes to video art, especially with the Dance with Camera show. I also had the honor of co-hosting along with Kaegan Sparks (Penn ’10/ICA Student Advisory Board) a screening and discussion with the video artist Ryan Trecartin that was truly amazing. I love to see artists sticking to their guns, doing what they want to do.”

What Javi himself wants to do is and isn’t clear. He’s excited about his upcoming work at Lord and Taylor, where he interned in the buying department last summer, but he has ambitions beyond retail management. We talked about ICA’s 2009 Tim Rollins and K.O.S. exhibition—“so poignant, so introspective,” Javi said, adding that he liked it partly for the way it brought together art, education, and activism. Javi, who volunteers teaching saxophone at the Penn Alexander School feels that art and social engagement are as much in his future as business is. “I think there’s a way to bring them together,” he said.

I love the art students involved at ICA, and I love the art history majors. But engaging students in other fields—medicine, engineering, business—has a particular delectation. They are true ambassadors, sailing away on ships to other places, bringing the good news of art.

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